Page 8 of We Were Never Lovers
Sean narrowed his eyes at him. It remained unfathomable even though everybody said it—Jayden, Ben, Doctor Harris, his other teammates who were still in Perth. Because it turned out while his brain had gone and fucked off the last two years, it’d decided to drop him in the same time, almost to the day; September, the start of the offseason for them since he’d had his accident on the Monday morning after they’d been eliminated from the finals, the semi this time. And all these people, none of them came out and outright said,Jack is your best mate, but it was there in the way the first thing they said when they came into his hospital room was, “Where’s Jack?” smiling as if Jack had just popped to the cafeteria or into the city for proper coffee. “Course he’s gone to get you better coffee,” they’d grin and take a seat, not waiting for an answer, certain this was the case. Sean was bewildered, but those comments, those knowing smiles, told him they really were friends. Why then didn’t Jack want him to know that?
“Yeah, so why can’t I see the evidence of it?” he asked and opened his phone with a passcode. Jack knew his passcode. Jack was giving him his back, crouched down in front of Sean’s bag again, his black tracksuit pants tight over his ass, his white shirt stretched nice and tight over his muscular back, each knob of his spine visible. Jack was, like all of them (they were athletes), nice to look at—built, fit, firm. Jack stood out in the bicep department, the thick, rounded muscles swelled up to strong shoulders, and his chest was muscular, stomach flat and firm, thighs impressively chorded but built for efficiency, not show—and Sean might hate the guy, but he could appreciate looking at him, would’ve liked it better if he did more with that body than play mediocre games and get injured.
Jack turned back to him, a chicken and salad roll, a packet of medication and an orange Gatorade in hand. “‘Cos, it’s like, a lot, like the doctor said,” Jack shrugged, handed him the haul before stepping back, giving Sean a polite amount of space and looking out the window. “I’m just gonna go check on Lola, then I’ll be back. Eat that, take those, and yeah. Thirty minutes tops, I promise. Are you gonna be okay?”
Sean’s eyes roved over Jack, who was pretending to focus on the port. Something was off. This wasn’t where he lived, he was absolutely sure of it. Jack was more uncomfortable than usual—Sean was used to the nervousness, but this was deeper, this was uncertainty. Sean liked to see Jack suffer, but he liked to come at him as a worthy opponent, not like this.
“But,” he started, he felt stupid saying it again—I don’t live here.
Jack, to Sean’s surprise, sat down beside him on the couch. He reached out and Sean tensed thinking he was about to touch him, but Jack just gripped the armrest of his wheelchair and ignored the tension in Sean’s body.
“What do you need? Tell me and I’ll make it happen,” Jack said. His earnestness was unnerving. Not because Sean didn’t know he was an earnest guy—he did and Jack was, he was like that with the team, with the coaches, taking on what they asked of him and immediately agreeing to do it, and then, sometimes amazingly, doing it without question. But it was unnerving to be the subject of it—the intense stare, his eyes wide in his face. Even more unnerving was the eye contact. Jack rarely met and held his eyes, as if he feared it. And that was here now, on the edge of his gaze, ready to dart away at any moment, but he was in it too, Sean could see that—he was really braving it for Sean’s sake.
“Sean,” Jack said gently when Sean just stared at him, his hands gripping the roll, the meds, the drink in his hands. “What were you gonna say? What’s the ‘but’?”
Sean took a deep breath and looked out the window, the river a golden shimmer that hurt his eyes. “But I don’t live here.”
Jack tightened his grip on the wheelchair. He exhaled audibly and finally agreed. “No, not really. No.”
“Where do I live?” he asked, scared of the answer.
Jack exhaled. “With me.”
Sean felt like he’d been struck—he lived with Jack? Him? In what fucking universe could he live with Jack? And yet, the way Jack said it—heavy and honest with a hint of defiance—Sean knew it was true.
“So what is this place?” he asked because it seemed like the safest question on his ever growing list.
“This is your place,” Jack said, “but it’s more of an investment property. When Ben moved in with Lara, you moved in with me and bought this place. You list it on home share apps, make a bit of income out of it.”
“So I’ve never lived here, lived here?” He felt like a moron. Who needs to ask where they live? But he needed to know what he was feeling was true. He needed to know he could trust something.
“No, never,” Jack smiled, Sean could hear it in his voice. “We’ve had a few blues over the years, but you always kick me out, not the other way round.”
“And you just go?” Sean asked, even though he wanted, weirdly, to ask where Jack went.
“Yeah, course,” Jack said. “I go stay with Annie,” he finished like he knew Sean would want to know that.
Sean looked at him, trying and failing not to scowl, but who the fuck was Annie? And what was Jack telling her about Sean?
Something flickered in Jack’s eyes, but he was careful to bury it as he replied evenly. “Annie’s my sister,” he stated. “I have four older sisters. Annie’s in East Freo with her husband and two kids, my nieces, Sophie and Clara.”
“And you stay there?” Sean asked even though he felt like this was an absolutely bizarre conversation. What kind of friends have a blue so bad they kick the other one out? Well, the kind of ‘friends’ him and Jack would be, which is not really friends at all.
Jack quirked his lips and ducked his head. “Nah, you always call and tell me to come home.” He stood suddenly. “Eat and take your meds and I’ll take you home.” He disappeared down the hall into one of the bedrooms before Sean could say anything else.
3
The house’s windows glowedwith warm lights beyond the thick wall that ran around the perimeter, the blocks the same as the convict prison not a few hundred metres away as the crow flies. Bougainvillea, bloated and pink, spilled over the wall, a little gate of ornate black iron spared at the centre.
“It’s gonna be a bit awkward with the chair,” Jack said. Sean looked away from the house at his tone—Jack wanted to say something else and this was the comment leading to it. This drove Sean crazy—he’d always wanted to shout at him, ‘Just say it! Just fucking say it!’ But when he’d told Ben that, after watching Jack have a particularly agonising conversation with their coach, Jack tiptoeing around what he’d wanted to come out and simply ask—could they try him more forward rather than midfield?—Sean had sat on the carpeted floor of the locker room, stretching, eyes fixed on the circling conversation and ready to tear his hair out at the painfulness of it, but when he’dcomplained to Ben about it when they got home, Ben had looked at him incredulously. “Everyone talks to Hurley like that,” he’d said like Sean was dense. “Can’t just come out and ask, come on.”
“Well maybe, but it’s the way Jack does it,” Sean said.
“Why’ve you got such a hard on for the bloke?” Ben replied with a laugh.
Sean spluttered, told Ben he fucking well knew why and that wasn’t the point right now.
But now, listening to Jack explain how difficult it would be to get the chair up the porch steps, how he’d get a ramp installed tomorrow, he’d called the club for help, Sean had to stop him.
